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When you primarily sell products, you have a great many freedoms that a service professional doesn’t have. However, these freedoms can also have a dark side that service professionals don’t need to bother with. Here are several ways in which marketing a service is different from marketing a product.

Relationships are key.

If you sell vacuums, you make your sale and move on. However, if you provide a cleaning service, you need to build a relationship with your clients so they not only let you into their homes and places of business, but work with you so that you can provide a better service.

Relationships are key to the success of a service business. Without good client relationships, there is no one to provide your service to!

The need to be picky.

When you sell products, you don’t really need to like your customers … at least not all of them. But when you provide a service, you’ll be working with that client over a period of time. If you don’t like your clients, you’ll be miserable in your business.
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You might have heard the call yourself … the call to create some sort of stable income through the use of a continuity program or membership site. If you’ve been with me long enough, you know I’ve tried several times to get one going, but it never took off. So you can imagine how much I looked forward to hearing what Daniel Hall had to say during his presentation on continuity programs at Market Your Way to Wealth in April.

Here is the 5-step process Daniel suggests you take to create a continuity program that will not only provide regular income, but support a lifestyle you actually want to live.

Step 1: Examine your interests.

A continuity program is not something you create lightly. You’ll be more successful and able to keep it going for the long haul if it is based on something you are actually interested in and passionate about. Also, if it is based on something you are good at, that helps.

Step 2: Find a hungry audience.

Now take your list of interests, passions and expertise and do the research to find out if there is a hungry audience for what you have to offer. Do some key word research. Search phrases that are three or more words long and are searched for between 50 and 100 times a day are more likely to have buyers searching than just researchers.

Step 3: Determine the model you want to use.

There are several different types of continuity programs you can have:

• membership site
• fixed-term membership site
• coaching program
• association or club

And several other variations on the theme. Which one will work best for what you want to offer and the audience you want to offer it to?

Step 4: Set up the platform to make it work.

You can use protected directories, a membership plugin for Wordpress, and autoresponder service, or just a monthly mailing list. What ever systems and/or technology you need to make your model work, set that up.

Step 5: Market, market, market.

No one will join your program if they don’t know it exists. So you’ll have to continuously market the program to keep up membership.

NOTE: I was so impressed with his presentation, I joined his coaching program on creating continuity programs. Keep your eyes peeled for what I end up producing!

One of my favorite presenters at Market Your Way to Wealth this year as Lisa Cherney who talked about zeroing in on your “juicy” benefits and highlighting our “juicy” benefits.

Basically, if you identify who your ideal clients are — the clients you absolutely love working with — and then identify all those wonderful, unique benefits and solutions that you offer especially for them, you’ll attract more of your ideal clients into your business.

Of course, Lisa isn’t the only one talking about this. Remember Maria Marsala? I interviewed her for the Women’s Business Gallery a little over a year ago and she talked about it, too. It makes sense, if you’re going to grow a business that you love, why would you want to have clients that you don’t love as a part of it?

Anyway, here are some of the golden drops of juiciness that Lisa shared with us.
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Dr. Mike Woo Ming was one of the speakers at Market Your Way to Wealth this year and the focal point of his presentation was that to win new business, you need to focus on solutions.

For example, did you know that 64% of small businesses in the U.S. with more than 100 employees do not have their own website? If you could either provide that service, or help connect web service professionals with small business owners, do you think you could grow a business?

Take a good hard look at your target market, that group of individuals you were meant to serve. What are their challenges? Develop solutions for those challenges and you will grow your business.

This approach can vastly improve your marketing. Don’t try to sell the features of your product or service. Don’t just list all the benefits your client will gain from their purchase. Focus on the solution those benefits bring.

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Here I am with MaryPat Kavanaugh, the Queen of Connections

My notes from the second day of Adam Urbanski’s Info Profit Success event is riddled with little golden nuggets. Let me see if I can make sense of them for you.

Do not use “Submit”

When your autoresponder service generates an opt-in form for you, it will generally use the word “submit” in the action button. Don’t leave it there! This word has some subtle psychological triggers that will work against you. Change it to “Register Now,” “Send my my ebook” or something else that is personalized and relevant to your offer.

If you can get into your prospect’s heart, it is much easier to get into their wallets

This is just another way of saying that a prospect will need to feel like they know you, genuinely like you and have trust in you before they will buy. So, the first step in marketing is to build that relationship.
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